


Shake the Gray

by hairbearstare



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:36:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9604331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hairbearstare/pseuds/hairbearstare
Summary: They met at an art show.Written for the Inception Kink Meme // Original prompt:"I want some very messed up, AU Arthur/Eames where instead of being addicted to dreaming, they become addicted to hardcore drugs."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another old one from my Livejournal. I promise I'll write something new soon. I have ideas, I swear!

It was good at first.  
  
It was damn near perfect even, the thing they had going. Arthur was still in a job—Eames was painting, and selling, and even making some good money. They would only use on weekends, when Arthur didn’t have work, then they would fuck for what seemed like hours—neither of them would come, but it was _them_ and them being close and it was amazing.  
  
They would come down, bare limbs entangled in knots, skin prickling at the surface, minds detached from bodies and floating in the atmosphere. And they would lay there until they woke up and stretched languidly like they had their entire lives to be there like they were.  
  
It was good at first. It was really fucking good.  
  
-  
  
“Arthur,” Eames whispered, lips ghosting along Arthur’s bare neck. They were naked and warm and the sheets were obscenely soft. He couldn’t remember whose room they were in. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except for the two of them bathed in half-rays of sunlight streaming in through the curtain’s cracks. “Arthur....”  
  
“Eames.”  
  
There was a partial smile tugging at the corners of Arthur’s mouth. Dimples in his cheeks and angular bone structure and perfect skin. Eames wished suddenly that he could paint him. Make his beauty into ever-lasting art.  
  
“Let’s go again, darling,” he breathed out. He felt Arthur shiver and it was lovely. His tongue slipped out between his teeth to taste the hollow between his shoulder and neck; to trace along the ridges of skin and bone.  
  
“Fuck.” Arthur swallowed and shifted against Eames. “I don’t know if I can. I have to leave tomorrow. Work on Monday,” he mumbled.  
  
“So we’re at my flat.” Eames grinned.  
  
“Yes,” Arthur laughed that breathy sort of laugh he got either after sex or after a hit. Eames almost moaned.  
  
“Just once more. Then you can leave tomorrow morning,” he murmured, flattening his palms over Arthur’s stomach and pulling him closer. They both curled inwards, staying chest-to-back and so very comfortable. “Once more and then not again until next week. Next week we can pick up where we left off, yeah?”  
  
Arthur hummed noncommittally and his eyes fluttered closed for the barest of seconds. “Just once more.”  
  
“Fantastic.” Eames grinned.  
  
They sat up and prepared, candles and spoons and needles and tourniquets in hand. Arthur injected between his toes. Eames found the forearm more classic. Besides, he was a painter. He didn’t have a reputation to uphold, not like Arthur did.  
  
They would lie back once the tingling set into their skin. Once there was a strange numbness at the surface, broken by electrical shocks from touch. They would reach out and cup each others’ faces, staring and searching and laughing in a floating sea of euphoria—they were suspended in it. Suspended in time and space and they were simply in between.  
  
Kisses left burning imprints on their lips, but they couldn’t get enough. Their tongues would roll together, teeth grazing sensitive flesh and they would gasp together. Eames couldn’t help but touch every piece of bare skin presented to him. His fingertips would fly over Arthur’s body, not sure where they wanted to rest most. They would press into the back of his neck briefly, run down his shoulders, feel the dips of his ribs, the jut of his hipbones, the smooth valleys of his thigh muscles—everything. Eames’s mouth was on fire and his fingers couldn’t stop trembling.  
  
He slung a leg over one of Arthur’s and grinned against his mouth. He couldn’t open his eyes—like they were glued shut. He felt infinity stretch out before him. He felt the universe open its floodgates and he was pouring out. He felt the slivers of sun sear his skin and Arthur’s hands on his back branding him.  
  
It was in these moments that he handed himself over completely—he was Arthur’s and Arthur was his. They were the only two people on Earth, there on that bed. Everything was perfect.  
  
He laughed and couldn’t stop laughing. The sun was setting between the glass skyscrapers outside the window, casting an orange glow around the room. Eames wrapped his arms around Arthur and held him as close as he would get. They were both sweating and hot and sticky, but neither seemed to care. Eames pressed his face into the curve of Arthur’s neck and breathed in. He was shaking still. His entire body was trembling, but he couldn’t bring himself to think.  
  
His mind was blank and everything was so very good.  
  
-  
  
They met at an art show—some posh event where Eames was forced to wear a jacket and tie and talk about the deeper meaning of his work. Mostly he was there shock some little old lady into thinking one of his pretty paintings actually represented crude sexual exploits or Satan worship or something along those lines. Also the buffet was a bonus.  
  
Arthur was there with his boss—they were friends, and enjoyed those sort of events. Eames felt more like sinking into a corner and sipping the free champagne than giving quotes to magazines or discussing his use of lines and colour.  
  
But as he was being paid to show up and talk, he did so. He still sipped at the free champagne though—albeit, guzzled more accurately described his rate of consumption.  
  
He was partway buzzed by the time Arthur came waltzing over, eyes narrowed as he inspected one of Eames’s larger pieces. It was tall, about seven by eight feet, and splattered with aggressive reds and oranges and neon yellows. Most people thought it a happy piece, but Eames had been going for more frustration than anything else.  
  
“This looks like you were pissed off while painting it,” Arthur hummed.  
  
Eames thought he might be a little in love.  
  
“Exactly,” he said, smiling. “Finally somebody gets it.”  
  
“I don’t see what’s not to get,” Arthur snorted, placing a champagne flute down onto a waiter’s passing tray. “It’s a pretty straight forward piece.”  
  
“That’s what I thought, too, but most seem to think I was going for ‘joyful’.” Eames raised an eyebrow and downed the remained of champagne in his glass. “Eames, by the way.”  
  
“I know.” Arthur smirked, and wow, Eames thought, is he ever gorgeous; dark eyes and that smirk screamed danger. The dimples softened the look a bit, though. “Do you have a first name?”  
  
“Don’t use it anymore.”  
  
Arthur simply nodded and held out his hand. “Arthur.”  
  
“Usually people ask me ‘why not?’ after that,” Eames laughed, but shook Arthur’s hand anyway. His grip was firm and assertive and _oh_ Eames had to concentrate on not thinking how that hand would feel wrapped around his cock. The way Arthur was looking at him though—like he wanted to _devour_ him—made it a bit difficult.  
  
“What if I don’t care?”  
  
Eames grinned widely and held onto Arthur’s hand a bit longer. “I like you, Arthur.”  
  
“Good,” he chuckled, taking his hand back. “I’m going to go outside for a smoke, Mr. Eames.”  
  
Eames felt a bit taken aback when Arthur all but turned on his heels and began walking away. He felt like he had just been rejected—he thought they had something good going, maybe.  
  
“Are you going to join me?” Arthur’s eyebrow was in a delicate arch, hands in his trousers’ pockets and that damnable smirk back on his face.  
  
Eames wanted to scream out _fuck yes_ , but settled for, “Sure.”  
  
  
  
Eames found out quickly that Arthur only answered his phone between Friday evening and Sunday night. After that, his calls went straight to voicemail. Between those times, however, Arthur would pick up his phone almost on the first ring. It was strange how utterly _separate_ Arthur’s personal life and his work life were. But Eames wasn’t complaining, not a first at least. Seeing Arthur on weekends was better than not at all.  
  
Because Arthur was indescribably fascinating, really. He loved sex and he loved cigarettes, though not at the same time. He ate whatever was in Eames’s fridge, which was mostly frozen french fries, bacon, raw hot dogs and leftover Chinese food. He lounged around in Eames’s bed in only his boxers and read Alexadre Dumas while inconspicuously—or so he thought—watching Eames paint.  
  
For being such a yuppie on weekdays, he acted very bohemian on weekends. Eames wondered what Arthur’s apartment was like. Was it a reflection of weekend-Arthur or weekday-Arthur? Would it be spotlessly tidy or have articles of clothing strewn over every piece of furniture? Would he hang Piet Mondrian on the walls or John Lennon posters?  
  
He was an enigma that Eames loved to try and solve.  
  
“Arthur,” he murmured one afternoon, while the sun shone cold through the frost-tipped window, “what exactly do you _do_ during the week?”  
  
“Work, mostly,” Arthur mumbled nonchalantly, glancing up from his book. “Why?”  
  
“Curious.” Eames grinned. “You show up on Friday, wearing a fucking three-piece suit, take it off and lounge in your shorts until Sunday evening, excluding sex, and then put it back on and leave.” He raised an eyebrow. “It’s all rather baffling, to be honest.”  
  
“I’m an architect, Eames,” Arthur laughed, rolling his eyes, “I’m not in the mob or something, if that was what you were implying. You’re not going to be assassinated by being involved with me, I promise.”  
  
“Ah, well.” Eames smirked, leaning over Arthur on the bed. “That’s comforting.”  
  
“I can imagine so,” Arthur sighed, reaching up and kissing Eames once. “Now take off your clothes and fuck me, I have to leave in a few hours.”  
  
“Right then.” Eames smiled wider at that and climbed on the bed. Weekends with Arthur were better than none, after all.  
  
-  
  
Arthur caught Eames shooting up when he arrived earlier than he normally did on Friday. Eames liked to do it only occasionally at that point, when his creativity felt like it was at a standstill and he needed _something_ to get it flowing again. Feeling the needle in his arm, pulling up and plunging down sent him straight into his own mind. It was amazing, what he could find there, and all he wanted to do after was spread it onto a canvas.  
  
Arthur barged in somewhere around three, when Eames was just tying off a rubber tube around his arm, needle held between his lips.  
  
“Darling,” Eames greeted him, frozen in place like a child who had just been caught pilfering sweets.  
  
Arthur raised an eyebrow. “I never took you for a junkie, Mr. Eames,” he said coolly.  
  
“I never thought you’d care,” Eames countered after plucking the needle from his mouth. His hands were shaking as he brought it to the bulging vein at the back of his elbow. He hoped this wouldn’t be a deal breaker between himself and Arthur. Truth was, he really liked being around the bastard. He loved the easiness of everything between them. He loved the way that Arthur could just lay there and watch him paint and not give a fuck if they did anything else. And _yes_ he loved the sex.  
  
“I don’t,” Arthur sighed and toed off his shoes before kneeling in front of Eames, covering his hand before he could pierce the skin of his forearm. “But if you’re going to do this with me around, you should be kind of enough to share.”  
  
Eames nearly dropped the needle altogether.  
  
-  
  
His hands were trembling still as he prepared another syringe. His mouth was dry and he wondered how the fuck Arthur would react to this, if he would want to do it again, if he would stand up after and walk away or what. There were a thousand thoughts racing through his head and he would be glad to soon silence them.  
  
Arthur was lying on Eames’s bed, completely naked. He had seen the sight a million times, but seeing it _now_ suddenly took the breath from his lungs. Arthur, bathed in the afternoon sun, was fucking _beautiful_. His skin was flawless, soft shadows cast over him, highlighted with gold. His hair was starting to fall out of place and into his dark eyes, brighter as the sunlight hit them. He was completely enthralling and statuesque and _so fucking beautiful_.  
  
“Where do you want me to do it?” he asked breathlessly, kneeling beside the bed.  
  
“Somewhere discreet,” Arthur murmured, smirking that damned smirk.  
  
“Right.” Eames nodded. He brushed his fingers over Arthur’s back, almost in awe. He felt the individual knobs of his spine, the dimples in his lower back, the curve of his ass, the firm muscles of his thigh and finally settled on the back of his knee. “Might hurt a bit.”  
  
“Just do it.”  
  
Eames grinned and licked his lips. He kneaded Arthur’s thigh for a moment, kissed the back of his knee—which earned him either a sigh of pleasure or annoyance from Arthur, he couldn’t tell—and held the needle over the vein there.  
  
“Here we go.”  
  
He pierced the lovely skin there, pulled up slightly before slowly pushing all the way down. He did the same for himself afterward, using Arthur’s tie as a tourniquet and tapping his forearm until a vein appeared. And _fuck_ if he didn’t feel amazing.  
  
He leaned back against the wall and laughed breathlessly. His eyes opened lazily as he watched Arthur. He was breathing in long pulls of air, eyes staring at the wall opposite him with unfocused eyes. His lips were curved into a sated smile—he looked completely blissed-out and lost for the barest of minutes that seemed to stretch on into eternity.  
  
Eames hummed and reached up, dragging his fingertips over Arthur’s cheek. “So how do you feel, then, darling?” he murmured.  
  
“I...” Arthur stared, voice barely a whisper, “I....”  
  
“Yeah?” Eames laughed.  
  
“I’m going to be fucking sick.”  
  
His entire body jerked at that and Eames pulled his hand back. “Fuck! Wait, wait, wait, hold it until I get you to the toilet. Shit, Arthur, Jesus Christ,” he hissed.  
  
He stumbled to his feet and all but dragged Arthur to the bathroom who, to his credit, managed to hold off vomiting until he reached the bathroom. He heaved into the toilet, knuckles white as he gripped the edge. Eames sat beside him and tried to shake off the high as he stroked Arthur’s back and held back his hair. Arthur’s body was shaking heavily and Eames wondered if he should grab a blanket or a jacket or _something_ because maybe he was cold and needed it.  
  
Several minutes passed before Arthur finally stopped dry heaving and simply slumped against the bathtub.  
  
“It’s okay, darling,” Eames murmured, leaning beside Arthur and wrapping an arm around him. “Happens to the best of us the first time.”  
  
“That was amazing,” Arthur responded, smiling a lazy sort of smile. “Even... it felt good. It felt really good. Fuck. _Fuck_.”  
  
Eames blinked and snorted. “You’re insane.”  
  
“You love it,” Arthur said, leaning over and planting a sloppy kiss on Eames’s lips.  
  
“As much as I love kissing you, Arthur,” Eames mumbled, gently pushing him away, “you still stink like vomit. Brush your teeth and take a shower after you come down, then we can think about kissing.”  
  
“Alright,” Arthur laughed, almost _giddy_ and simply rested his head against Eames’s shoulder. “Alright.”  
  
Eames was shocked and delighted all at the same time. Arthur was an enigma, alright. He was a spectacular puzzle to put together, and every time a new piece was revealed, Eames found he only wanted _more_. Arthur loved sex and cigarettes and Alexadre Dumas, but as he sat there, rubbing his cheek against Eames’s shoulder, there was so much more.  
  
Arthur was amazing, and Eames had wanted him all.  
  
-  
  
As spectacular as their weekend trysts were, it didn’t prevent Eames from craving some time with Arthur during the week. Whether he was painting in lazy brush strokes, or splatter painting, he wished Arthur were there, dark eyes boring into the back of his neck.  
  
The using had escalated, slowly but surely. They both wanted it—that euphoric, soaring, soft electrical pulse thrumming through their veins. They shot up at least once a day, every weekend, sometimes twice a day. Eames didn’t mind. He loved just being able to hold Arthur close without the pretence of sex and only that of the two of them wanted to be close. Their bodies were drawn together like magnets while they were using. It was the same electricity that pulsed through them that held them together, like static. They couldn’t let go until they came down completely and Eames _loved_ it.  
  
Between highs, they would eat whatever they found laying around Eames’s flat, lay in bed and speak in hushed whispers, minds teetering just on the edge of lethargy. Eames loved that, too: simply being with Arthur, speaking with him, listening to him talk, even if he never said anything about himself unless Eames specifically asked.  
  
Arthur’s mind was a work of art, just like his body.  
  
After a nap and maybe a quick fuck, Eames would go and paint of hours. His paintings, he realized, slowly began to take in Arthur’s influence. He liked to paint bursts on colour of a canvas and quickly paint over it with structured shapes and deep colours—Arthur. He loved to paint Arthur and anything to do with Arthur.  
  
Eames found himself quickly becoming obsessed.  
  
The weekends were beautiful. They were beyond beautiful. They were what Eames looked forward to every week. But the problem became the days between Sunday and Friday. Eames’s empty flat, his empty bed, his empty veins. He rarely used anymore if Arthur wasn’t there but that didn’t mean he didn’t _want_ to. Of course he wanted to. The idea of shooting up alone though was just so incredibly bleak now that Arthur was in the picture. He knew that if he did, all he would think of is _what if Arthur were there_. The thought depressed him, so he held off.  
  
He really did start itching for it, though. It was a constant thought at the back of his mind, omnipresent and so close it was as if it was whispering in his ear— _come on, Eamsie, you know you want to, just this once and you can wait again, just this once._  
  
It was frustrating. His skin felt like it was ready to peel off and crawl away when he didn’t have it, like it was sagging and loose and falling off. He hated it. He hated how perfect everything seemed when he was high, and how dreary everything was when he wasn’t. He wanted it more and more and more and he wanted _Arthur_ with him when he did, but Arthur had such perfect self control where Eames just fucking _didn’t_.  
  
It was always such a relief when Arthur walked through his door, already undoing his jacket and loosening his tie.  
  
“Thank fucking _god_ , you have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting this,” Eames babbled, already taking out a lighter, spoons and a tiny package of _amazing_ China White that had been taunting him all week.  
  
Arthur chuckled under his breath, trying to act nonchalant, but Eames could _see_ his hands shaking as he started to undo the first couple buttons of his shirt. “I know, it’s been a long week.”  
  
“You have no idea,” Eames growled, trying to stop himself from trembling as he set up a pair of syringes. “I missed you.”  
  
Arthur paused mid-grab for the needle and stared at Eames, like he was debating on a proper response. “I missed _this_ ,” he murmured, and leaned over to kiss Eames, gentler than he ever had. It almost scared Eames how affectionate that one fucking kiss was. He wouldn’t complain because _fuck_ it was Arthur and every time Arthur kissed him it felt like his entire body was on fire. But Arthur rarely showed affection and Eames wasn’t sure if it was the promise of a hit that made him like that or just Eames or a combination of both. Either way, it made his heart thrum in his chest.  
  
“Come on, let’s go,” Arthur whispered against Eames’s mouth.  
  
Eames grinned and felt relief and joy and excitement wash over him even before he stuck his arm.  
  
-  
  
“I think I love you.”  
  
Eames cracked an eye open and stared at Arthur, sitting up in bed. He had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, ash building at the tip. He looked so relaxed, with his hair curling at the back of his neck, his eyes half-lidded and his back slumped against the headboard. He looked so fucking gorgeous and contemplative and perfect that Eames had to smile.  
  
“Darling, I think that’s the junk and nicotine talking for you.”  
  
“No, Eames,” Arthur sighed, plucking the cigarette from between his lips and setting it against the ashtray on the bedside table that Eames had bought specifically so Arthur wouldn’t get ash on the bed. “I’m serious.”  
  
Eames blinked a couple of times. His sluggish mind took longer than he thought necessary to process that statement. But when he did, he felt his heart skip one too many beats and his vision go blurry for a split second. He went rigid and still and he may have even stopped _breathing_. “Oh fuck.”  
  
“I know,” Arthur said bitterly, picking the cigarette back up and taking a long drag. “ _Fuck_.”  
  
“Jesus.”  
  
“Mmhm.”  
  
“Bloody fucking _hell_ , Arthur.”  
  
“You can stop being shocked now, Mr. Eames, it’s becoming redundant.”  
  
“Right, right,” Eames grunted and sat up, trying to stop his heart from pounding so fucking hard. He stared down at his lap and tried to mull over the right thing to say. What the hell could he say? He pressed his face into his hands and took a deep breath. Arthur remained cool as ever, face carefully blank. “This is... good.”  
  
“Good?” Arthur scoffed, scratching at his forearm. “It’s not good.”  
  
“Thanks for that, Arthur, but I’m trying to say something meaningful here,” Eames snorted, giving Arthur a pointed look, who returned it perfectly. “I think I love you, too.”  
  
“That’s just great,” Arthur mumbled, running a hand through his hair and stubbing out his cigarette.  
  
“I thought you might be happy about that.”  
  
“I wanted to keep this simple,” Arthur sighed, staring at the ceiling. “But it’s not anymore.”  
  
Eames pressed his lips together. He reached over and cupped Arthur’s face, pulling it down so they were looking eye level once again. He let out a long sigh and felt himself smile. “That doesn’t mean it still can’t be good,” he murmured, thumb caressing Arthur’s cheekbone.  
  
Eames was ready to burst. His heart was beating straight out of his ribcage and his breath was coming in short gasps. He wanted this. He wanted Arthur still. He wanted to acknowledge this, whatever it was—love, infatuation, obsession. All he knew for sure is that he wanted Arthur there and that, really, Arthur wanted him too. And it was beautiful and amazing and it made Eames want to leap to his feet and fucking _dance_.  
  
Arthur, seemingly against his will, started to smile the tiniest bit—just a small quirk of his lips and softening of his eyes. “You better make it good, then.”  
  
“Oh, darling, I _will_.”  
  
-  
  
Half-rays of sunlight. Spring air. Limbs entangled in sheets and breath against skin and goosebumps spreading over entire _bodies_.  
  
Hours stretched into weeks stretched into wonderful months and it was so very good.  
  
They didn’t speak specifically about ‘love’ again, but let their bodies talk for them. They were glued together for hours, touching unabashedly and kissing anywhere their lips could reach and reaching for that highest peak of euphoria.  
  
They kept it to weekends still. Always weekends. But that didn’t stop the cravings from wracking their bodies when they were apart. They never used separately—it was an unspoken rule. What would be the point without the other there? Their using was a thing that the two of them shared. If they didn’t use together, it would simply be one of them sitting alone and lonely and fragilely breathless and numb. They needed that electric touch to break the numbness.  
  
But _fuck_ did they start to want it more and more and more.  
  
-  
  
Eames felt a particular itch on a Wednesday. His hands were restless and shaking and he had smoked four cigarettes at that point and it really wasn’t helping. All he could think about was how fucking wonderful a hit would be but he needed _Arthur_ there to do it and it was _fucking Wednesday_.  
  
He groaned and pressed the back of his head against the wall, banging against it to hopefully _bash_ the horrible, aching craving out. His body was screaming at him for it. His fingers were bitten and bloody—a new habit he had taken up as of late to distract himself from thinking about how _badly_ he wanted that hit. He had tried sucking on mints and sweets and chewing gum but that apparently only worked for smokers, because it didn’t help him one fucking bit.  
  
Maybe Arthur was feeling the same. Maybe he was tearing his hair out as he scribbled down plans for buildings or what-have-you.  
  
Eames just whined and curled onto his side, fingernails _throbbing_ and he pressed the bloody stumps into his palms. It helped for a split second, but as soon as he let go, the body wracking craving returned with a vengeance. He had never wanted something so fucking _bad_ in his entire life. He needed it, he fucking _needed_ it, but he needed Arthur and Arthur never picked up his fucking phone.  
  
He let out a ragged breath and tugged at his hair. Fuck. _Fuck_ he needed something to stop this—morphine or even fucking _codeine_ would take off the edge. But he didn’t have any sort of pain killer that would just blur the edges of the horrible fucking _need_.  
  
He tried painting with shaking hands. Cold blues and dark black and bleak grays were his palette of the evening in broad, angry strokes, then tiny, shaking ones. His mind was cold and miserable and fuck that craving, that throbbing, omnipresent need....  
  
He decided to dial Arthur’s number, just to try.  
  
“Please, please, please...” he whispered in a mantra. “Come on, darling, pick up, please....”  
  
“Eames.”  
  
“Thank God,” Eames nearly sobbed in relief. “Arthur, would you be so kind as to come over? I feel as if we don’t spend enough time together.”  
  
It was a half-assed excuse, but he hoped Arthur got the picture. _God_ he really hoped he did.  
  
“Eames, it’s the middle of the week—”  
  
“But you picked up the phone,” Eames cut in, “you picked up the fucking phone and that must mean you _want_ to see me or you would have sent me straight to voicemail.” His sentences were hurried, but goddamn if he didn’t want to hurry this conversation up, cut the bullshit and have Arthur get over there as soon as humanly possible.  
  
“....Yeah,” Arthur said eventually, “Yeah, I guess I did pick up.”  
  
“ _Please_ come over, darling.”  
  
There was a long pause on the side and Eames started to fidget, picking at the skin on his fingers again. He needed it, he really did, and the strain in Arthur’s voice told Eames that he needed it just as much. He could tell even through the phone that Arthur’s perfect self-control was starting to crumble and Eames didn’t give a fuck. He needed him, needed that fucking hit like he’s never needed anything before.  
  
“Alright. Alright,” Arthur sighed, “but just this once. Just this _once_ , Eames, and then we have to wait for the weekends. I have to work, and if this gets in the way of the Fischer project—”  
  
“I promise, darling, I promise, just this once.”  
  
And as he hung up and Arthur came over, they skipped the hello kiss and got straight to it. Eames injected faster than he had in a long time and Arthur injected in the vein between his thumb and forefinger. Eames was so relieved, he could cry. He held onto Arthur as they sunk to the floor like he was holding on to life itself. It would be just that once, though, just that once. He just needed it that once. He could wait for the weekends the rest of the time, he could.  
  
It would be just that once.  
  
-  
  
Eames hated weekdays.  
  
He despised the growing grayness and bleakness that he associated with a weekday. He hated the uncontrollable racing of his heart, the shaking on his hands, the urge to fucking _tear_ at his skin and his hair and everywhere else just to escape from wanting to dip into the tiny little bag of H every second of every day. He managed to score some OxyContin on the street and it took the edge off for awhile, but _fuck_ he wanted to dig into his veins so fucking badly.  
  
He hated Arthur for working. He hated Arthur for making him wait, for making him _want_ to wait until they were both together. He hated Arthur for being the one person in his life who he wanted to share this with. His dealer was a fucking scumbag, the rest of his friends would never approve. They had no fucking clue what they were missing of course because they never had the balls to fucking _try_ it, but fuck them. Arthur would do it with him, quite happily in fact.  
  
He popped another one of the Oxy pills from his dwindling supply, just to slow his heartbeat enough that it didn’t _hurt_. He groaned and pressed his heels of his hands into his eye sockets. His entire body ached and the Oxy took forever to kick in. It was the deepest ache he had ever felt—right down to his bones, right down to his _blood_. Everything hurt and his head pounded and his fucking hands wouldn’t stop _shaking_....  
  
He knew he should cut back. He knew he shouldn’t be shooting up four times a day every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but he couldn’t stop. The rush was too good, the lull too intense and his skin was so warm and Arthur’s skin was too soft—  
  
He whined as he thought about Arthur. He wished it was finally evening so Arthur would just _be_ there. He hated waiting. Waiting was the worst part and he didn’t want to wait any fucking longer. He looked at the clock on his phone.  
  
Five. Arthur would be there soon.  
  
_TGIF_ , Eames thought, smiling bitterly. Fucking Arthur. It was Arthur’s fault, Arthur with his fucking proper job at a proper architecture firm designing proper buildings. It was Arthur’s fault he was forced to wait through the weekdays. It was Arthur’s fault he couldn’t stick his arm whenever he goddamn well pleased. It was _Arthur’s_ fault he was shaking and sweating and wanting that hit so bad that he ached. It was _his fucking fault_ and Eames hated him for it.  
  
Finally— _finally_ —he heard the doorknob turning and Arthur came tumbling in. “Jesus fuck, what took you so fucking long?” Eames hissed, springing to his feet.  
  
“Fucking... traffic,” Arthur hissed. His skin was paler than normal, clammy and cold to the touch. Eames pulled his hand back like he was just burned.  
  
“You look like you’re dying, darling,” he said softly, suddenly concerned.  
  
“I just... I...” Arthur stammered. He was shaking like a leaf, like it was freezing inside Eames’s flat and he was naked. “I bought some. This week. I meant to bring it over to do with you, but _fuck_ , Eames, it’s hard when it’s staring you right in the damn face, so I just did a hit by myself before I left work, then another in the car because I didn’t feel anything and thought it might be bad, so I had to try it again—”  
  
He stopped and slouched against the wall, sliding down it slowly. “I was going to bring it over,” he mumbled, shaking and cold and _Jesus_ he was turning _blue_ and it was freaking Eames out something fierce, “I thought it would be good.” His breathing was slowing down and his eyes were rolling back and _shit_ how much did Arthur _take_?  
  
“Arthur?” Eames breathed out, leaning beside him. The skin of his fingertips was icy and his lips were pale and only getting paler. He was hardly breathing anymore and was still trying to whisper things to Eames. His irises weren’t even visible and eyelids were drooping and his lips slack. “Oh, fuck, Arthur, come on, breathe, please breathe, Jesus—” he whispered, frantic and shaking and _fuck_ Arthur was ODing and dying right in front of his eyes—  
  
He slapped his face, gently at first, then harder, just trying to get a rise out of the fucking _corpse_ under his hands and he was so damn cold and Eames thought he was going to _cry_ when Arthur just stayed slumped against the fucking wall.  
  
He picked up his phone and wasted no time calling an ambulance.  
  
-  
  
Arthur lived.  
  
The ambulance managed to get there on time and take him to a hospital to revive him. He was groggy and sick and wouldn’t look Eames in the eye when he first went to visit, but Eames was just so relieved that he didn’t _die_ that he could hardly care.  
  
He snuck in a pack of cigarettes for Arthur and left it in his open palm when visiting hours ended.  
  
Arthur was released after a day of observation. He came right over to Eames’s apartment, and was completely silent when he entered. It was strange, because Eames didn’t know what to say either. He had never been as scared as he was during those few hours where he didn’t know if Arthur was going to die or not. He just felt the strongest surge of relief and maybe even _love_ pour over him.  
  
“Arthur,” he whispered wrapped his arms around Arthur like he was made of glass—like he was fragile. Eames knew he was far from fragile, but he suddenly found him all the more _precious_ when it dawned on him that, yes, Arthur was human and he could die just as easily as anyone else.  
  
“I was fired, Eames.”  
  
Arthur’s arms were limp at his sides, and it was at that moment that Eames realized his shoulders were shaking.  
  
“What?” Eames breathed out, pulling back and staring Arthur in the eye, eyebrows knit together.  
  
“Well, I can’t blame them,” Arthur hissed, voice strained. “I OD’d and almost _died_ , why the fuck would they keep a junkie on board to design _buildings_?” he scoffed. “It’s dangerous for everyone. At least I won’t be a danger to the general fucking _public_ now.”  
  
He punched a wall. One of Eames’s paintings fell to the floor at the second punch. Eames didn’t try to stop him, knew that Arthur needed space and he couldn’t speak anyways. His throat was constricted and he felt his heart starting to splinter as Arthur just leaned his forehead against the wall, jaw clenched and nostrils flaring. His hands were curled into tight fists, trembling at his sides.  
  
“This is all your fault.”  
  
_That_ certainly knocked Eames out his stupor. Fuck. That fucking _stung_ like nothing else ever had. He felt those five words pierce straight through his very being, like Arthur had concentrated every ounce of loathing into a single phrase.  
  
“Excuse me?” Eames managed to say.  
  
“I said this all your fault,” Arthur growled. His eyes were cold as they stared Eames down. “If I had never met you, my life would have been _fine_. I would still have _friends_ who respected me, as opposed to _pity_ me. I may have met a girl, gotten married and had _kids_ , but no. I had to fucking meet _you_ and _you_ had to give me this shit and _ruin_ me!” he snapped, voice on the edge of shouting.  
  
“I didn’t fucking force you to, Arthur!” Eames shot back. “I don’t recall shoving you down and sticking you against your will, you fucking _asked_ me to, you snotty fucking prick. Don’t you _dare_ go blaming your life’s ruin on _me_.”  
  
“If I had never met you—”  
  
“But you did.”  
  
Eames’s tone was final. Arthur’s mouth clamped shut and he glared from underneath his lashes. His hands were still balled at his sides and for a moment, Eames thought he might throw a punch. When several moments passed with no movement from either of them, he relaxed slightly.  
  
“What are you going to do now?” Eames asked slowly.  
  
Arthur paused and stared down at the floor. His fists unclenched and his posture dropped, shoulders slouching and spine curving and he looked so very _small_ at that moment.  
  
“I don’t know. I just... I don’t know.”  
  
They laid down on the bed, still completely clothed and horrendously, painfully sober, and held each other.  
  
-  
  
“I sold one of my paintings today.”  
  
“You haven’t painted anything in weeks.”  
  
“It was an old one.”  
  
“How much?”  
  
“Five hundred.”  
  
Arthur smiled the tiniest bit. He was still lounging in Eames’s flat, in only his boxers, holding a copy of _The Man in the Iron Mask_ , but things had somehow shifted—it was a weekday, for one. It was a Tuesday, and Arthur was there, and it for some reason clawed at something under Eames’s skin. Maybe because it showed that things had _changed_ , that things weren’t easy anymore.  
  
Arthur’s smile was another. It was tight and thin, unlike the slow, honey-like smiles he had before. He had changed, that was for certain—he only held _The Man in the Iron Mask_ now, rarely cracked it open and even more rarely actually read it. He always stared at Eames like he was expecting something. His presence became something unnerving.  
  
Eames wished they could go back to when things were easier. He wished that he could _paint_ but every time he stood in front of a canvas, his hands would freeze and his mind would blank. Instead of painting most days, he would crawl into bed and switch on the television. Sometimes Arthur would join him. Sometimes he would shoot up and zone out for hours. Sometimes he would just lay back and stare at the ceiling and wonder what the fuck he was even doing.  
  
He was running out of old paintings to try and sell, though. He needed to do something eventually.  
  
“I have to pay the rent with that money,” Eames sighed, hands tapping against his knees. “If we want to stay here.”  
  
“I have some money saved,” Arthur said quickly. “I could move out of my place. Live here full time.”  
  
Eames paused and stared at Arthur, eyes going wide. He was sweating and his mouth was dry and his heart was beating _way_ too fast. “You want to...” he trailed off, biting his lower lip. “Arthur.”  
  
“You don’t want me to,” Arthur said, more a statement than a question.  
  
“No!” Eames answered quickly. “That’s not what I mean, I’m just... _surprised_ , is all.”  
  
Arthur smirked and it was at the same time sweet and bitter. “Well, I don’t have much reason to stay at my apartment anymore, do I?”  
  
Eames stared down at his hands and shrugged slightly. “I suppose not.”  
  
Arthur hummed and reached over, cupping Eames’s cheek. Eames looked up and smiled faintly, taking Arthur’s hand in his own and kissing the palm. He let out a sigh through his nose and brushed his lips up to Arthur’s wrist, pausing at his pulse point and glancing up at him. “You really want to live here?” he murmured against Arthur’s skin.  
  
“Yes,” Arthur sighed, gently drawing his hand away. “Is that so bad?”  
  
“Of course not.” Eames grinned and leaned over to press a lingering kiss to Arthur’s mouth. “You’ll find another job, though, won’t you?”  
  
Arthur’s smile faltered only slightly before nodding. “Of course.”  
  
-  
  
It wasn’t so bad at first.  
  
Arthur managed to find a job at a seedy little convenience store down the road—something he obviously despised because it was humiliating to work somewhere _so beneath him_ , but it was a paycheque and he needed the money. He worked nights and would show up in the early hours of the morning and slip into bed and curl against Eames, still thinking he was asleep.  
  
It was nice, living with Arthur, Eames thought. It was nice being able to shoot up any day of the week. It was nice being able to fuck whenever they felt like it. It was nice being able to stay high and not feel that bone-deep ache every waking hour.  
  
Eames still hadn’t painted anything, even a month after Arthur had settled in. He had dozens of canvases of varying sizes but they all just seemed to _surround_ him in a blank sea of white and _mock_ him, like he wasn’t talented anymore. Like he was a complete fuck-up. Like he was used up, a complete waste of space and that was what he _felt_ like as he stared at their blank surfaces, paint on his palette, on hands, seeping through his fingers.  
  
He ran out of old paintings and he was on his last thousand dollars. He needed to paint something _soon_ or he would be out of money and have no way of making anymore. But _fuck_ , it was like every creative cell that used to fire off in his body was dead or numb or on a fucking vacation.  
  
He was frustrated and irritated and he couldn’t fucking _do_ anything.  
  
So he stayed up for endless nights and waited for Arthur to get back, staying high as he could and mindlessly watching TV or staring at a wall—it was all the same.  
  
Arthur would get back and flop down onto the bed. “You need to sleep at some point, Eames.”  
  
Eames would just stay silent and unmoving.  
  
And Arthur would just sigh and fall asleep while Eames mindlessly stared at the white noise on the television.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t so nice, but it was as nice as it was going to get.  
  
-  
  
Arthur, Eames thought, looked the most beautiful in the bath. It was the way his hair fell into his face and his palms skimmed over the surface of the water. It was the way his eyelids drooped and all his muscles seemed to relax and Eames loved it.  
  
Sometimes Eames liked to join Arthur in the tiny bathtub—to crawl in next to him or behind him and run his fingers through his hair, kiss his damp neck and shoulders, his temple, behind his ear.... It was glorious, in the warmth of the bath, buoyant in the water. He felt light and airy and close and _free_. It was times like those when worries about his painting, about money, about shooting up become insignificant. It was just him and Arthur again, in their own world.  
  
It was a night when Arthur didn’t have to work—a night when they had already shot up twice during the day and were just living out the remaining hours of the high and they were both feeling glorious. They were both sitting in the warm bath, water still around them, Eames’s head against Arthur’s shoulder. It was a beautiful moment and they were both complacent and silent and feeling _good_.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames whispered. Arthur flinched at noise that broke the comfortable silence. “Do you feel it anymore?”  
  
“Feel what?” Arthur murmured, tilting his head back slightly.  
  
“The... the...” Eames waved a hand in the air vaguely, “the rush. It’s...” he swallowed, having a hard time finding words. “It’s.... I can’t. It’s gone. For me.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur said, “it’s definitely not as strong.”  
  
“Fuck,” Eames sighed, nuzzling his face against Arthur’s shoulder. “We’re fucked, aren’t we?”  
  
“Yeah.” Arthur nodded, slowly. “Yeah, we are.”

-

The rent was due and they didn’t have the money.  
  
Eames could see Arthur was panicking. He’d probably never missed a payment before in his life and the mere thought was freaking him out. Eames was calm—they still had some time to scrape some money up before they would be evicted, after all.  
  
“Eames. For fuck’s sake, you need to _do_ something,” Arthur hissed. “You need to paint something or get a fucking job or... I don’t know, _fuck_ somebody because we need some goddamn money. I have a fucking job, why the hell don’t you?” He still sounded cool as ever, but there was definitely venom behind his words. It made Eames shiver.  
  
“Jesus, Arthur,” Eames scoffed, “I haven’t had a real job since I was fourteen. I’m rubbish at the whole nine-to-five thing. I would never go,” he said. “And besides, do you honestly think I’d be able to fuck someone else? I’d never be able to get it up,” he snorted, lips quirking up the tiniest bit.  
  
“Then let someone fuck _you_ ,” Arthur sighed, rolling his eyes. “Eames, I’m serious. I have no more money and isn’t like that store job pays very well. _You_ need to leave this apartment once in awhile, or do something productive like _paint_ something so we can pay the rent.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Eames said, raking a hand through his hair.  
  
Arthur grit his teeth and folded his arms around his chest. He was itching for it, Eames could tell by the way his hands were clenching around his biceps and the way his eyes were darting around the room. Eames couldn’t say he wasn’t craving a hit either, but their stash was dry and they didn’t have any more money left over.  
  
“You want—”  
  
“Eames, don’t,” Arthur hissed, voice wavering.  
  
“I was just wondering—”  
  
“ _Yes_ , okay?” Arthur snapped. “Yes, I fucking want it but it’s either... either _this_ ,” he ground out, pulling up the sleeve of Eames’s shirt and tracing his fingers over the growing track marks, “or this apartment.”  
  
He looked conflicted, desperation flashing over those normally so very controlled eyes. His fingers wrapped around Eames’s hand, perhaps just to keep from shaking.  
  
“And I would still prefer somewhere to live,” he hissed, sitting back down and curling his arms around his knees. He rested his forehead against his knees and let out a shaky breath. “At least for awhile.”  
  
Eames swallowed thickly against his dry throat and nodded. He wrung his hands together and glanced back at the stack of blank canvases and tubes of paint and brushes. Maybe if he could just find _something_ to draw from, he could paint something to sell. Someone would buy it.  
  
He propped a large one up against the wall, took a tube of black paint and smeared it over his palm. He felt Arthur’s eyes bore into the back of his neck as he spread it over the canvas.  
  
-  
  
Eames was sweating. The room was too hot, too big, the air was too thick and he felt like he was _drowning_. It was too much and he could hardly take it. He couldn’t move—his limbs were frozen in place and his vision was swimming and he felt like he might throw up if he stood up.  
  
Arthur was shivering violently beside him, wrapped up in blankets.  
  
“I can’t do this,” Arthur said, voice shaking and weak, “I can’t do, this, Eames. It’s... it’s too fucking much, I can’t—I can’t—”  
  
Eames groaned and rolled over, to the edge of the bed, away from Arthur. He covered his ears, tried to block out the noise and tried not to listen because _fuck_ he felt like he was dying and like he couldn’t do it, either. But they had no money. They had no _stash_ and Arthur wasn’t getting paid until the end of the week.  
  
“I can’t do this. I can’t. I _can’t_.”  
  
Eames curled into himself. He wanted to scream at Arthur to _shut the fuck up_ but couldn’t find his voice. The walls were pressing down on him, slowly. They were going to crush him—break him slowly until he was a smear on the floor. Or he was going to suffocate on the air—there wasn’t enough oxygen in it, fuck, that’s what the world was doing to the goddamn air, diluting it so there was no fucking _oxygen_ —  
  
“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t—”  
  
“Arthur, _darling_ ,” Eames growled, “would you please _be quiet_?”  
  
But it was like Arthur couldn’t hear him, like he was trapped in a daze. He kept mumbling and Eames wanted to strangle him. He needed the quiet, needed the blissful silence. But Arthur was mumbling like a _crazy person_ and wouldn’t shut the fuck up and _kept going_.  
  
Eames found the strength to get up and lock himself in the bathroom. He sat down between the toilet and the bathtub and wrapped his arms around his knees.  
  
He could still hear Arthur’s faint whispers through the walls, like ghosts murmuring in the drywall.  
  
-  
  
  
When the end of the week came around, Eames couldn’t remember being happier to see his dealer. He bought quickly and could have nearly run home, if he wasn’t feeling so sick still. He walked quickly, though, walking quickly through the door and holding the baggie up to show Arthur.  
  
Arthur snatched it and prepared nearly half the baggie’s contents just for himself.  
  
“Jesus, Arthur, slow the fuck down and save some for me!”  
  
“Shut the fuck up,” Arthur snapped, rubber tube between his teeth as he wrapped it around his bicep. “Shut the _fuck_ up, Eames, you did fuck all to earn this, you useless waste.”  
  
Eames narrowed his eyes. “That’s a bit _harsh_ now, don’t you think?”  
  
“No,” Arthur said, pressing the needle into his arm and swearing. He was digging around, trying to find a vein. Eames winced at the sight. “Your paintings are shit and nobody’s going to want them—fuck,” he hissed, withdrawing the needle and trying again. “They—they’re nothing like what you did. They _look_ like you made them so you could fucking sell them. There’s _nothing_ behind them. They’re shit.” He sighed in relief when he finally hit a vein. “I do all the work. You sit on your ass and watch TV or sleep while I work at that fucking _store._ ”  
  
Arthur’s gaze went out of focus momentarily as he injected. The tension seemed to melt away from his muscles instantaneously.  
  
“I was an architect, Eames,” he said, “and now where am I? I’m shooting up with an artist who can’t paint and working at a convenience store.”  
  
He didn’t sound angry anymore, but maybe that was the junk talking. He sounded mostly... regretful. Melancholy. Eames couldn’t look at him because _he was right_. Arthur had it all together before. He was successful and brilliant and beautiful and now he looked like he was wasting away into a _shadow_ of what he had been. Eames may not have forced him into this life, but he didn’t prevent it, either. He didn’t push him, but he didn’t stop him. Eames started this. He felt a stab of remorse deep down to his core.  
  
He sat down beside Arthur and stared at his lap. “I’m so sorry.”  
  
Arthur’s face crumpled and his shoulders fell forwards as he buried his face into his hands. Eames couldn’t bring himself to touch him.  
  
-  
  
Arthur disappeared for a few days.  
  
Eames had no idea where he went—didn’t know if he had family or other friends that he could see. He didn’t ask when Arthur came back. He was _bothered_ by it, though. Arthur had never just up and left and not said where he was going before.  
  
It was Arthur who said something, hours after he arrived back, hands shaking around a cigarette. “Don’t you want to know where I was?”  
  
Eames glanced up from the television momentarily to shrug. “It’s none of my business.”  
  
“What if I had never come back?”  
  
“I...” Eames paused, trying to form a coherent thought. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You would have hardly noticed until someone came to kick you out of this place because you never pay rent,” Arthur snorted. “What if I told you I was out fucking someone else?”  
  
Eames looked up and he felt his stomach drop. “I... Arthur.”  
  
“You never want to anymore.”  
  
“Because you _work_ nights and sleep all day,” Eames snapped. “Of course I want, but you’re never in the mood. You’re too busy being pissed at me to ever want to.”  
  
“And you’re too busy being a lazy prick to even _care_.”  
  
“ _Were_ you out fucking someone?”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
Eames’s heart might have broken a little. He was angry, sure, but mostly he was hurt. He turned away and pressed his lips into a thin line. He could feel his throat constricting and found himself up unable to speak or move or anything. He wanted to erase the previous conversation from his mind—he wanted to think about Arthur as being _his_ , being with _him_ , not parading around some seedy bar, handing himself out to someone else. It felt so fucking _wrong_.  
  
“Here,” Arthur mumbled, tossing a wad of bills on the floor beside Eames. “I got three hundred bucks out of it. Guy wouldn’t let me leave the fucking bed.”  
  
He stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door. Eames didn’t touch the money.  
  
-  
  
It quickly turned into a routine that Eames despised—Arthur would disappear and come back stinking of someone else’s cologne or perfume, wad of bills in his pocket. Sometimes he would be gone for a night, sometimes for week and Eames would be up thinking of all the things these people were doing to Arthur—touching him and fucking him and would he moan the same way he moaned when Eames touched him? Would his back arch in the same delicious curve? Would he mumble those same quiet, breathy “please”s?  
  
Eames wanted to tear his hair out every time he thought about it. He hated it. He _hated_ because he loved Arthur and Arthur had said he loved him, too. It was wrong, everything was wrong. It was wrong because he was shooting up alone again just to make himself stop thinking about Arthur’s ‘clients’. It was wrong because Arthur was an architect, for fuck’s sake, not a whore. It was wrong because people in love weren’t supposed to go out and fuck other people for cash, even if they needed it.  
  
Everything was so wrong and fucked up and it wasn’t supposed to be this way.  
  
Arthur came back one night, had been gone a few hours, still stinking of sex and stale sweat.  
  
Eames wanted to cry or throw up or _hit him_.  
  
“Arthur,” he said, standing up. Arthur kept walking, making his way to the bathroom. “ _Arthur_.”  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
Eames wrapped his arms around Arthur’s waist, buried his face into this back of his neck. He tried not to notice the bruise there, the bruise that he didn’t leave. “Please....”  
  
He felt Arthur slump backwards. He felt Arthur cave in at the middle and press backwards, felt him shaking and trying to hide it.  
  
“Please stop,” Eames whispered. “Please, Arthur, please, I love you, please...” he murmured. “We don’t need the extra money, I’ll do something, I promise, just—”  
  
“Eames,” Arthur said, voice cracking in the middle. “We need the money. The store laid me off.”  
  
Eames felt like he was going to cry. “When?”  
  
“About a month ago.”  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?”  
  
“I...” Arthur paused and placed a hand over Eames’s connected ones across his stomach. “I was figuring something else out.”  
  
“Arthur....”  
  
“It’ll just be for a little while,” Arthur said softly, stepping away. “Until I find something else. It’s not going to be a permanent thing, of course, so...” he sighed. “Can we just—” he looked over into the bathroom. “I want to have a bath.”  
  
Eames swallowed and nodded. They shot up in the warm bathtub and Eames washed Arthur’s hair, ran his hands over his body, whispered “I love you” against his skin more times than he could count. He pretended not to feel Arthur’s shoulders shaking the entire time.  
  
-  
  
Everything was all fucked up and Eames knew it.  
  
Things were supposed to be easy and fun and it was supposed to be _good_ , but it wasn’t anymore. They were sliding downhill faster than they could claw back up. They were falling and falling and Eames didn’t know how to make it stop anymore.  
  
Arthur was selling his ass. Eames was left sitting back at their apartment, rocking back and forth most nights with thoughts racing through his head, wondering how long it would be before Arthur came back and if he was playing safe and if he was _rotting in a ditch somewhere_ because his smart mouth got his head smashed in by some psychopath and—  
  
He tried not to think about stuff like that.  
  
He knew Arthur was smart enough to not get hurt. He knew Arthur would be careful, but it didn’t stop the thoughts and images of Arthur laying dead somewhere from popping up in Eames’s mind.  
  
Not everything was bad, though. There were still good moments and he revelled in those, tried to cling to them and make them last. Those were the moments when they were both riding out the last waves of their high, bodies pressed together under blankets and they would just lay there and _feel_ each other. They would kiss languidly, like they had all the time in the world. They would fall asleep wrapped around each other and feeling so fucking good.  
  
Then Eames would wake up late in the evening to find Arthur getting dressed and his heart would sink.  
  
“Don’t leave,” he said one night, watching as Arthur’s hands paused over his belt buckle. “Just tonight, love. One night won’t hurt.”  
  
“One night’s still worth a lot of money,” Arthur said, pressing his lips together. It was a victory to Eames to just have him contemplate staying, and he obviously was from the conflicted look flashing across his face.  
  
“We could go out to dinner.”  
  
“With what money?” Arthur snapped.  
  
“I’ll cook then,” Eames snapped back, sitting up. “There’s chicken in the freezer and I’m sure there’s vegetables in the fridge somewhere—”  
  
“Eames, _stop_.”  
  
Eames shut up and stared at Arthur, throat tight. He just wanted one night. _One night_.  
  
“I can’t,” Arthur said softly, reaching out and gripping Eames’s hand. “I—I’ll be back in the morning. We can order Chinese for breakfast.” He tried for a smile but it was tight and controlled.  
  
Eames let out a sigh, but nodded. There was no point in arguing once Arthur had made up his mind.  
  
“Go back to sleep,” Arthur said, and walked out after that, leaving Eames to sit in the dark, alone.  
  
-  
  
The problem was that Arthur _didn’t_ come back in the morning.  
  
He disappeared for two nights and Eames was ready to claw his skin off and was freaking the fuck out. Arthur always came through on his word, was always on time, never forgot a promise. Eames spent two nights pacing through the entire apartment, barely taking the time to shoot up—which only seemed to calm him down for an hour or two. He wished suddenly that they had the money to pay their cellphone bills. He wished that he had a real job so Arthur wouldn’t have to go out every night and could stay home so Eames wouldn’t have to freak out every time he was gone for a night or two.  
  
He wished a lot of things, but that wouldn’t change the fact that Arthur could be lying face down in a puddle somewhere, unconscious and possibly _dying_.  
  
He was holding his head on the couch, coming down off of a sub-standard high when Arthur walked through the door. His head immediately shot up and he felt a wave of relief wash over him. It was short-lived, though, because all he could feel after was how fucking _pissed_ he was.  
  
“Where the bloody fuck were you?” he snapped.  
  
Arthur winced and raked a hand through his hair—grown out and curling around his ears and looking greasy. There were bags under his eyes and—was that blood on his chin?  
  
Eames frowned and stood up. Arthur immediately looked away and busied himself with taking off his coat. “Sorry. Things got a little complicated,” he said quickly. “Took a little longer than I expected, so—”  
  
When his head turned back, Eames cringed. He had a black eye, for one—not terrible, but definitely bruising. His lip was split and bleeding and— _fuck_ —there were finger-shaped bruises, dark and painful, around his neck. Eames felt his hands shaking.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur mumbled, “got a little rough. It happens.”  
  
“It _happens_?” Eames scoffed. “Are you serious? Arthur, it looks like the guy tried to _strangle_ you.”  
  
“Different people get off on different things,” Arthur sighed. Eames noticed that his arms were wrapped around himself defensively and he wouldn’t meet Eames’s eye. That was a first. He looked so small, standing there, staring at the ground and Eames fought the urge hold him and never let go.  
  
Instead, he wrapped his arms around Arthur and pressed his face into his shoulder.  
  
“Eames—” he started to protest, but didn’t finish. Maybe decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe he was just exhausted. Eames didn’t care, just held him there and kissed under his jaw.  
  
“Stay home,” he murmured.  
  
Arthur’s arms wound around Eames’s middle, hands fisting into his shirt. He nodded quickly, his entire weight falling against Eames. “Okay.”  
  
-  
  
Eames decided he would try to cook the next night. He wanted Arthur to stay in bed, rest up. He even caught Arthur cracking open a copy of _The Three Musketeers_ and skimming over the pages. It was like seeing something from another life, but it was _good_ and Eames felt himself feeling something like relief—like a pressure had been released from his chest and he could finally breathe again.  
  
So he wanted to cook something, maybe to celebrate, maybe to show Arthur that he could, in fact, do something right.  
  
He dug through the freezer and found a few frost bitten chicken breasts. He thawed them in hot water and tried to find something that would go as _sauce_ and found half a bottle of old teriyaki sauce. He decided that it would do and tossed the half-solid chicken breasts into a pan with the teriyaki sauce and put it in the oven.  
  
He waited half an hour, which seemed reasonable, and took the chicken out.  
  
He frowned when he saw the charred outer shell of chicken skin. He felt his heart sink when he cut in and the chicken was still fucking _raw_ on the inside.  
  
He sat down on the kitchen floor and pressed his hands into his eyes. He had wanted to do something nice for them. He had wanted some sense of _normality_ , but he fucked that up too. He couldn’t even cook chicken. He felt like such a fuck up—he couldn’t paint anymore. The flat was scattered with half-finished, shitty paintings that nobody would want to buy _ever_. He couldn’t work a normal job—junkies usually didn’t have much luck in the job market. He couldn’t even _cook_. He felt so useless and used up and like such a fucking _burden_  
  
If Arthur hadn’t have met him, he would be a successful architect, designing buildings for the city. Maybe he would be happily married, litter of kids on the way with some beautiful girl on his arm. Maybe they would move to the suburbs and live in a house with a white picket fence and live happily ever after and have _the perfect fucking life_ , but no.  
  
Eames had to have met him.  
  
It was the first time that Eames felt like it was his fault. It was the first time that he felt like Arthur _would_ be better off without him.  
  
But Eames loved him _so fucking much_. He knew that he should leave. He knew that if he left, maybe Arthur would go find help and get his life back together. Maybe Arthur would design buildings again, get clean, make money....  
  
But Eames was selfish. He knew he couldn’t leave Arthur, even if he tried to.  
  
-  
  
Three in the morning and Eames had no fucking clue what day it was.  
  
Arthur was out. The sun was down and the streets were loud and it was like everybody was screaming outside and around him and _right in his fucking ear_. It was like the world was burning and everyone wanted a piece of it, but Eames couldn’t move. He was in bed, staring the ceiling, watching how the air shifted in the dark. He was going to be consumed in the flames, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.  
  
There was a spot on his arm, one of the injection sites, that was started to swell and itch and ooze pus, but he didn’t fucking _care_ anymore. Maybe it would get gangrenous. Maybe it would have to be amputated. He didn’t care. He just didn’t care.  
  
All he wanted was for everything to be good again, but it was impossible. Everything was too fucked up. _They_ were too fucked up. Everything was a mess and there was no way of cleaning it up anymore.  
  
He sat up and wandered over to his abandoned paints. He stared at them and it was like they were staring back, mocking him. He picked them up one bucket and a brush and stared at a canvas. Nothing. There was nothing. He didn’t know what he wanted to paint. He didn’t know if he _could_ and the feeling was so foreign. He had always known where to start with a painting, even if he didn’t know what it was going to be. He could always _start_ and then that start would lead him to the finish. Like he was discovering the painting.  
  
But nothing came to him.  
  
He picked up a brush and soaked it in paint. He pressed it against the wall and walked, leaving a dripping, thick line of black on its surface. He walked all over the apartment, in a daze, painting and leaving thick jolts of paint. He focused on the bedroom. He used his thickest brush to slice at the wall, across its surface. He wanted to coat the room in black. He wanted the very _walls_ to feel what he was feeling—nothing. He wanted to see the room as a void. He wanted the blackness and darkness to be all-encompassing, all over the room. He painted and painted and didn’t notice the sun coming up until it was shining in his eyes.  
  
He tried to paint over the windows, block out the sun. He wanted darkness. He wanted nothingness. That was all he wanted anymore.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?”  
  
Arthur’s voice cut through his daze like a knife. He dropped the paint and the brush at his feet, let the paint soak between his toes.  
  
“I hate this,” he whispered. “I hate this. I hate this, I _hate this_.”  
  
“Hate _what_?” Arthur sounded desperate. He walked over and took a hold of Eames’s shoulders, shook him.  
  
“Everything,” Eames snapped, jerking away. “This apartment, what we are, what we’re doing, _life_ and light and _everything_ ,” he groaned, tugging at his hair and pulling some out, hands shaking violently. “I hate this, Arthur, I fucking _hate it_.”  
  
“Eames, calm the fuck down.” Arthur’s voice was on the verge of panicky, but Eames just didn’t _care_ anymore.  
  
“I can’t do this anymore,” Eames whined, hands still in his hair and shaking his head. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t handle it. Everything was so fucked up and he just couldn’t _handle it_.  
  
“Eames,” Arthur said, grabbing a hold of his hand. “Calm down, okay? Just... sit down and think and breathe.”  
  
Eames tried to pull his hand away with half-hearted strength. He couldn’t bother. He did as he was told—he sat down and breathed.  
  
“My arm,” he croaked when Arthur sat next to him. “My arm. It... it fucking hurts.”  
  
Arthur swallowed audibly and held Eames’s hand. He looked down and saw the puffy, red injection site. “Jesus, Eames,” he whispered. “It’s... I think it’s an abscess.”  
  
Eames rocked back and forth, not saying anything. Couldn’t say anything. He stared straight ahead, hand limp in Arthur’s.  
  
“We need to go to the hospital.”  
  
Eames shook his head. “I don’t want them to cut my arm off.”  
  
“They’re not going to cut your arm off. We need antibiotics.”  
  
“Don’t...” Eames trailed off before nodding. He kept rocking, not moving, staring at the walls, still wet with black paint. He felt better as he looked at them. It was like he was staring into a starless, moonless night. It was like being surrounded by nothingness.  
  
It was good.  
  
-  
  
They took the subway to the closest hospital. Arthur held Eames’s hand the entire way, and Eames just stared straight ahead of himself.  
  
The doctors and nurses looked at them with a mixture of pity and revulsion. Arthur looked away, ashamed. Not that Eames blamed him, really—he was a respectable person once. He still retained a kind of dignity. No one else could see it, though, not through the track marks and sunken in eyes and translucent skin, but Eames could. Arthur still held his back straight in the same way he did before everything fell to shit. He still had that sharp look his eyes, beneath the junk-thick glossiness. He was still elegant in that way that Eames couldn’t describe.  
  
But no one could see that anymore. All they saw when they saw Arthur was the addict.  
  
And Eames wanted to curl up and die because that was his fault.  
  
They made them sign some papers. Eames could barely hold a pen. Then they made them wait in the crowded ER waiting room, filled with people looking paler than they did—people in wheelchairs, elderly men with trembling hands, young women rocking back and forth with greasy hair. They sat in silence. Arthur wouldn’t let go of Eames’s hand.  
  
The prescribed him some antibiotics that would get rid of the infection on his arm—said they were smart not to leave it. He gave them that same kind of look that everyone else did: _what are you doing to yourselves?_  
  
They paid and they left; took the subway home.  
  
They laid in bed in heavy silence, limbs wrapped together as the quiet crushed the air from their lungs.  
  
-  
  
Eames woke up the next morning and untangled himself from Arthur. He stared at the walls, at the streaks of black, at his own fit of madness staring back at him and cringed. He looked at the floor instead. He popped an antibiotic and picked up a needle.  
  
For the first time in a long time, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to get high. He just needed to. His body needed the numbness. His mind needed the silence. But he didn’t want it.  
  
He injected anyways, into his leg. He almost missed the vein his hands were shaking so badly. He felt something akin to shame as he sunk down against the floor and curled his arms around his knees. Even high, he couldn’t have a moment of peace anymore. There was always something—always something; sadness or anger or shame or what the fuck ever. It was _always something_.  
  
He rested his head against his knees and rocked. His back thumped against the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to push the shame away. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t.  
  
-  
  
Arthur stayed home and reminded Eames to take his pills.  
  
They hardly spoke. Eames usually stayed curled into himself, staring away blankly. He liked to watch his canvases—he liked to see their blankness, their facades speaking to him—no longer mocking him, just... there. They were trying to convince him to move, maybe. But it wasn’t that simple. He only moved to shoot up. Arthur occasionally came with food that he wouldn’t touch.  
  
He wanted it all to end.  
  
He said that at one point and watched Arthur’s face crumple before he turned away. Eames couldn’t feel bad about it. He _did_ want it to end. He wanted everything to just be over. He didn’t want to feel anymore. He couldn’t handle it if the rest of his life was reduced to this.  
  
“When I met you,” Eames said, breaking the omnipresent silence, voice hoarse from lack of use, “you were... everything.”  
  
“Eames.”  
  
“Arthur,” he whispered, cracking his eyes open. “You were beautiful, and successful, and sharp, and proud.”  
  
“Stop—”  
  
“I’ve turned you into a shadow,” he breathed. “How is it that beauty’s the only thing I haven’t managed to ruin?”  
  
Eames reached out and brushed his fingers over Arthur’s sharp cheekbone. Arthur closed his eyes. Eames could hear his breathing become shallow. He flattened his palm over Arthur’s cheek and pushed the grown-out hair behind one of his ears. He swallowed and pulled his hand back, curling back into himself.  
  
-  
  
“I’m not sorry I met you.”  
  
Arthur pressed a kiss to Eames’s forehead and wrapped his arms around him.  
  
“And I’m not sorry I’m here now.”  
  
-  
  
Spring air hovered over them. The sun filtered through the sheets hung up over the windows, bathed their skin in golden sunlight. It felt warm. It felt like something out of a life lived years ago. Eames felt his skin prickle under the warmth. He opened his eyes and looked to see blue sky peeking through the cracks in the sheets.  
  
He sat up and tore the sheet down. He heard Arthur inhale sharply as the light hit his still-closed eyes. He squinted against the light and flattened his palms over the glass of the window. He cracked it open and inhaled the cool spring air.  
  
“Arthur.”  
  
Eames didn’t look back, but he knew Arthur was listening.  
  
“We need to stop.”  
  
He did look back from the window at that, saw Arthur sit up and stare at his hands folded in his lap; saw his Adam’s apple bob with a thick swallow; saw the shaky inhale that made his ribcage tremble.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur whispered, head bobbing in a nod.  
  
“We need to—”  
  
“I know,” Arthur murmured, looking up and staring at Eames, eyes sharp. “We have to... we can’t keep doing this.”  
  
Eames sat down and closed his eyes; felt the sun beat against one side of his face. He reached out and placed hand over Arthur’s, fingers curling loosely together. “How are we going to—”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
Eames nodded slowly and leaned against Arthur, hand tightening around his. He felt his heart beat heavily in his chest. He felt his stomach twisting nervously.  
  
But it was okay.  
  
“Alright,” he breathed out.  
  
He looked down at the healing wound on his arm and knew it was the only option they had. He looked at the set line of Arthur’s mouth and knew, somehow, they would be okay. Because even if they couldn’t overcome it, even if they ended up in the same place six months later, dying and stick-thin and holding each other as they wasted away, it would still be okay.  
  
Because they had each other and, underneath everything, that was all that mattered.


End file.
